Where exactly is your allotment? - Region - South East

[Crystalmoon]

Hi Aden I'm in the South East....in not sunny at all Kent!
This year has been so bad that I am actually planning to give up my allotment & am in the process of moving the raised beds to my tiny back garden so I can have a mini plot outside my back door.
I have arthritis & don't drive & have moved quite a long way away from my lotty recently so all of that combined with the awful weather, regular break ins at the allotments, silly new rules about not being able to grow anything that stays in the soil for more than one year  ::)  have made my mind up for me. I will be very sad to see it go after taming it from an awful wilderness to a very productive plot but I have to be realistic, keeping it on without the help of my sons who have now left home & moved away just isn't viable unless we are having normal seasons. If we were having a very dry year like last year I wouldn't be able to water enough! xJane     

[Crystalmoon]

[louise stella]

My plot is in rain sodden Kent!
Near Chatham in fact!
I shall go down tomorrow to pick some bits and bobs but must admit that this year it is very weedy - it is just so hard to keep it weeded when it's too wet to walk on!

[Aden Roller]

HI Jane (Crystalmoon) and Louise Stella.

Sorry to hear you are both experiencing the same as me. Miserable isn't it no matter how optimistic you try to be it is a b*gger of a year with little sign of good growing weather on the near horizon. Even if things do get back to "normal" I wonder if there's enough of the season left.  ::)

I think, Jane (Crystalmoon) you are very sensible. There's no point in struggling or worrying and if it's not enjoyable stop, adapt and if it suits carry on in a more manageable way.

I have one-and-a-half plots. The grass paths are lush (and need cutting yet again!!!!), the weeds wonderful and a few struggling crops are trying their best.

I give it one more year for the half plot as I have started a new home veg garden across the road in my parents new bungalow. Downsizing gradually. Not what I expected so soon as I'm now early retired but, what with the weather and looking after my parents 7 days a week, there's less time than anticipated.

At least we can't moan about all those trips up and down with a watering can.  ;)

It's pouring again after just 10 minutes sunshine (the first for 3 days) so I'm off to get my parents washing back in.  :(

[gray1720]

On the off chance that anyone still sees this thread, I've got two half-plots (that's like a whole plot, but with two other people in the middle!) on Wolvercote Common in Oxford. We're in 380-odd acres of water meadow, stuck out on the top of a SSSI thanks to a naughty Austrian named Adolf, with water from wells provided by the Thames a few hundred yards away. Well, it's a few hundred yards away at the moment, some winters it's right over the top of us! It's just about two hundred yards from our back door - I can just about see the alloments if I stand on the kitchen sink and look out over the rooftops - and on a sunny day it's a wonderful place to garden. When it's windy and the rain is coming in sideways on a westerly, it takes some dedication!

Adrian
 

[Digeroo]

Welcome to A4A.  I am just over the border in Gloucestershire technically in the South West.  We are near the Thames too.   So if I pee, sooner or later it will (after cleaning) be coming your way.     

The West/ North West Wind rips through our site too.    I plant tall peas along the windward side of my plot every year to give the plants some protection in the Spring and hide my courgettes etc behind bales of straw.   

[gray1720]

We are near the Thames too.   So if I pee, sooner or later it will (after cleaning) be coming your way.     

Sounds like you are just the sort of people upstream I worry about! 

It's also why I'm amused by the Commoners' Committee wanting to declare the common organic - with water from the Thames? Hmm...

Thanks for the tips about the wind (as it were) - might have to try the bales one in particular, and get some net for the peas to climb too.

Adrian

[Digeroo]

I personally would be more worried about what comes out of Swindon.

I agree with you that it would be very difficult to think of the River Thames as organic.  Very few of the farms upstream are organic.   

[Pink Shed]

Hi, I took over a 5 pole allotment on Hanging Hill, Marlow, Bucks 2 years ago last October. Hoping to get the neighbouring 5 pole one too, should hear any time now:-)

[mic]

Maidenhead

[Flint_sifter]

Lavant, about a mile north of Chichester.

Simon.

[Crystalmoon]

Hi everyone my new allotment is in Newtown Ashford Kent